Teaches beginning or advanced guitarists how to master the basic musical skills of fingerpicking techniques needed to play folk, blues, fiddle tunes or ragtime on guitar. Contents: All the Good Times * Along the Rocky Road to Dublin * Barrow Street Rag * The Beaumont Rag * Behind the Bush in the Garden * Campbell's Farewell to Red Gap * Candy Man * Candy Man Blues * The Cherokee Shuffle * Cranberry Highway * Cripple Creek * Eighth of January * The Entertainer * Fishing Blues * Freight Train * (There'll Be) a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight * Lark in the Morning * The Lazy Afternoon Blues * Little Sadie * The Liverpool Hornpipe * Lord Inchiquin * Louis Collins * Make Me a Pallet on the Floor * Man of Constant Sorrow * The Manchester Angel * The Mineola Rag * The Morning Blues * Pack up Your Sorrows * Paddy on the Railroad * Payday * Rain Don't Fall on Me No More * Shady Grove * The Sligo River Blues * Spike Driver Blues * Stealin', Stealin' * The Temptation Rag * The Trip to Sligo * Turkey in the Straw * The Year of Jubilo (Kingdom Coming).

(Banjo). Ken Perlman, today's foremost player of the style, brings you this comprehensive guide to the melodic clawhammer. Over 50 tunes in clear tablature. Learn to play authentic versions of Appalachian fiddle tunes, string band tunes, New England hornpipes, Irish jigs, Scottish reels, and more. Includes arrangements by many important contemporary players, and chapters on basic and advanced techniques. Also features over 70 musical illustrations, plus historical notes, and period photos.

Canada’s Prince Edward Island is home to one of the oldest and most vibrant fiddling traditions in North America. First established by Scottish immigrants in the late eighteenth century, it incorporated the influence of a later wave of Irish immigrants as well as the unique rhythmic sensibilities of the Acadian French, the Island’s first European inhabitants. In Couldn’t Have a Wedding without the Fiddler, renowned musician and folklorist Ken Perlman combines oral history, ethnography, and musical insight to present a captivating portrait of Prince Edward Island fiddling and its longstanding importance to community life. Couldn’t Have a Wedding without the Fiddler draws heavily on interviews conducted with 150 fiddlers and other “Islanders”—including singers, dancers, music instructors, community leaders, and event organizers—whose memories span decades. The book thus colorfully brings to life a time not so very long ago when virtually any occasion—a wedding, harvest, house warming, holiday, or the need to raise money for local institutions such as schools and churchs—was sufficient excuse to hold a dance, with the fiddle player at the center of the celebration. Perlman explores how fiddling skills and traditions were learned and passed down through the generations and how individual fiddlers honed their distinctive playing styles. He also examines the Island’s history and material culture, fiddlers’ values and attitudes, the role of radio and recordings, the fiddlers’ repertoire, fiddling contests, and the ebb and flow of the fiddling tradition, including efforts over the last few decades to keep the music alive in the face of modernization and the passing of “old-timers.” Rounding out the book is a rich array of photographs, musical examples, dance diagrams, and a discography. The inaugural volume in the Charles K. Wolfe American Music Series, Couldn’t Have a Wedding without the Fiddler is, in the words of series editor Ted Olson, “clearly among the more significant studies of a local North American music tradition to be published in recent years.”